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Dissident, Citizen

Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Thank you Cory for Little Brother. I can’t wait for my children to be old enough to read it. It has been a few years since I couldn’t put a book down and decided it was worth giving up sleep to finish. Cory has captured the feelings behind my mistrust of government and corporations. And the power they can exert over citizens, and the challenges when this power is abused.

You’ve inspired me to take action to protect my rights. The anti-circumvention provisions of the C-61 copyright amendment does more harm than good. It prevents crucial rights for citizens in a digital age. It prevents citizens from having the right to “use digital works without permission for research, private study, criticism or news reporting”. Michael Geist has posted 30 Things You Can Do to help reflect a consumer view of this amendment.

“The Industry Minister has time to meet with the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, time to meet all the major telcos on the spectrum auction issue, yet hasn’t made time to meet with user community on copyright.”

Bill C-61 scares me. It represents a shift in public policy back towards corporations. It reminds of the acceptance of monopolies and oligopolies that Canadians accept as tradeoff for our geography. The bill makes it an infringement to circumvent digital locks to prevent copying and distribution. To make it worse this bill prevents the distribution of the tools that can be used to circumvent digital locks. This means that watching a European purchased Region 2 encoded disc, like the legal copy of The Future is Unwritten I purchased from Amazon.co.uk, in Canada is illegal under Bill C-61.

This kind of thinking is important no matter what side of security you’re on. If you’ve been hired to build a shoplift-proof store, you’d better know how to shoplift. If you’re designing a camera system that detects individual gaits, you’d better plan for people putting rocks in their shoes. Because if you don’t, you’re not going to design anything good.

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Trading privacy for security is stupid enough; not getting any actual security in the bargain is even stupider. – Bruce Schneier

Help keep Canada free! Free as in freedom! We need to ensure we have the freedoms so that we can continue to think, explore, innovate, question and challenge authority and government in Canada.

C-61 and things like it are why it's so important to get politicians and civil servants engaged in things like DemoCamp. If the only people who bother to talk to them are special interest groups (the recording industry, old-industry unions, or whatever), it's *our* fault if the laws we get don't serve the interests of society as a whole. Saying &quot;we're here, they'd be welcome, there's nothing stopping them from coming out&quot; is about as useful as saying &quot;I've got a product that's so great I don't need to market it&quot;.

C-61 and things like it are why it’s so important to get politicians and civil servants engaged in things like DemoCamp. If the only people who bother to talk to them are special interest groups (the recording industry, old-industry unions, or whatever), it’s *our* fault if the laws we get don’t serve the interests of society as a whole. Saying “we’re here, they’d be welcome, there’s nothing stopping them from coming out” is about as useful as saying “I’ve got a product that’s so great I don’t need to market it”.

I generally support the Conservatives, but when governments start gobbling up personal freedoms it's bad for everyone. I've sent letters to Jim Prentice and my local MP and I encourage everyone I talk to do the same. Once elected politicians realize they're pissing off the people who support them, their minds open a little.

I generally support the Conservatives, but when governments start gobbling up personal freedoms it’s bad for everyone. I’ve sent letters to Jim Prentice and my local MP and I encourage everyone I talk to do the same. Once elected politicians realize they’re pissing off the people who support them, their minds open a little.